Our Israeli correspondent MC sent this note last night about the latest Palestinian gift to Sderot:
We’ve just had one of those wretched missiles over. The alarm went off as I was putting some stuff in the car — we had had Shabbat dinner with relatives and were just loading up to return home. There was no way that I could get to the nearest shelter, which was about 100 yards away, so I had a bad moment. Then I heard it buzzing about 300 feet over me. It went over the park then there was the white flash of the explosion and a bang over towards where we live.
The alarms are scary enough, but the buzz and the bang and the flash are spiritually disruptive.
Here we are, a civilian population under missile attack, it should be a war crime. If it were the other way round there would be howls of rage and arrest warrants, but we don’t count.
The missile exploded in a Gan (kindergarten) but at 11pm on Shabbat there was nobody there, thankfully.
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Below is the brief report from Arutz Sheva:
Gaza Rocket Explodes in Sderot
The “Red Alert” rocket siren was heard on Friday night in the Sderot and the Shaar Hanegev area of southern Israel.
A rocket fired by Gaza terrorists exploded a short time later in an empty kindergarten in the city of Sderot.
There were no injuries, but the building sustained damage.
Rocket and mortar fire from Gaza has continued to “trickle” into Israel on occasion despite a ceasefire which Gaza’s Hamas rulers agreed to.
In a SANE world, counterbattery radar would have the launcher’s location–and accurate firing data to a local 155MM battery before the missile got halfway to its target.
One pull of a lanyard and return fire would be on its way. (1960’s technology)
From launch to return fire IMPACT–90 to 110 seconds.
In a sane world, that is.
If this were an automatic response–not subject to discussion or negotiation–the rocket fire would END in two weeks or less. (DON’T talk to me about any “Palestinian” casualties. It’s just toooo boring already.)
May it come to be so.
Bad Idea
Hamas does not want to limit civilian casualties but maximize them.
They intentionally fire these missiles from areas where your 155MM battery would not kill the guys who fired the missile(s) but a bunch of civilians probably forced at gunpoint to be right next to the launching site. So, the dead civilians are filmed from 1,643 angles and in slow motion to extract as many Left Wing/Cultural Marxist tears as possible. Think Israel won? They did not.
I have a better idea. Form 4 to 6 Nayy Seal Type Hit Squads which would include Predator Type Drones. Go after Hamas Leaders and PLO Leaders and soldiers relentlessly and deny every killing claiming “it was just Muslims killing Muslims as usual.”
Israel has lost its collective nerve and until it recovers it only territorial concessions that are never ending will satisfy the West.
In addition, Israel should ally with East Asia and Russia and tell Europe to stuff it. In the meantime it had better hope for a Trump victory because a Biden or Clinton (Obama does not want her to win) victory will be 4 more years of Obama only worse.
The world believes that Israel murders Palestinians on a daily basis because that is what they are told, and because people do not go looking for truth, so the lies become a neo-truth. Many people want Israel and Jews to be ‘bad’ and will willingly act negatively on the basis of propaganda. It is not just Israel that suffers from this, Serbia too got on the wrong side of politics and was bombed, the same with Syria.
It would be all too easy for Israel to become a target of the NATO bludgeon, thus Israel cannot afford to have collateral damage in Gaza the way that there is collateral damage in Syria. Erratic White House foreign policy means small nations like Israel have to be wary and act as if there is a Muslim in the WH …….
Whaadya mean “as if”??
You must not have been paying attention for the LAST DECADE or so.
My guess; if such return fire were “automatic” and returned whilst missiles were still in the air–they would get away with it. Especially if all complaints were fobbed off on some bureaucrat with a “all complaints accepted only on Tuesdays and Thursdays after 3:00 PM”–“that’s just our policy” kind of attitude.
Iffen NATO did get around to anything the problem would be moot.
“It would be all too easy for Israel to become a target of the NATO bludgeon, thus Israel cannot afford to have collateral damage in Gaza the way that there is collateral damage in Syria.”
Absolutely ridiculous and typically delusional. Israel has a nuclear triad. It is a heck of a lot more dangerous to NATO forces than N. Korea or Pakistan, let alone non-nuclear Serbia. It also has a major function in its “human intelligence” that NATO and the US would never want to lose.
As I recall, the fine citizens of Sderot supported the Gaza/Gush Katif “Disengagement.” It was that which led to ever more projectiles coming from Gaza.
Israel has an insular Eablishment that makes ours look positively populist. This is largely because Israel has no true people’s branch, Knesset being run by party elites that have no constituencies to vote them out. Elites don’t care about Sderot or Hebron. They have, indeed, a visceral hatred of and fear of religious Zionists. THEY live in Judea and Samaria, and their murders are welcomed by these Israeli-don’t-call-Jewish elites.
The Muslims of Israel could have been pushed out easily by now. It would have made Israel much more popular because, as Machiavelli said, one should do the unpopular quickly. But the Muslims remain. I think that’s because their killing of Jews and the constant near-war footing of Israel, is politically USEFUL.
Don’t blame NATO, MC.
One does not blame the bludgeon, but those who wield it.
I remember that video from a while back, where they had the launcher set up just outside of a hospital, or some other civilian-rich building. Kids running around the site. It’s been like this forever it seems, people on the other side must realize that the rockets are going to come back someday.
With Europe becoming increasingly Islamic, the future of Israel is very much in doubt. One can imagine a future where Israel is surrounded in the entire region North to South by Islamic countries. That would be the end, as supply lines would be very marginal at best.
and watch Yah step in when that happens. Then it will really hit the fan.
They’ve been surrounded by muslim nations for decades. In 1948 the future of Israel was “very much in doubt”, it’s still there. Thanks in no small part to its superior military strenght. The supply line from the sea is an ace Israel holds and air transport is secure at this time. Don’t forget “Iron Dome” and “Drone Dome” and a useful ballistic missile submarine fleet.
Let’s suppose The Israelis developed a technology that could somehow intercept rockets from Gaza, turn them around, and send them back to their exact points of origin. Well, you say, nobody could possibly say that’s unfair. You’d be wrong. The next day there would be headlines here and there that would read something like this: “Israelis steal rockets from Hamas, use them to kill Palestinian civilians.”
It is impossible to overestimate the absurd lengths to which anti-Semites will go to blame Jews for attacks on Jews. I have lost count of how many times I have read that rocket attacks on Israel are merely retaliation for the Israeli border controls on Gaza. You and I know that is an absurd inversion the facts, that the border controls are an effort to prevent Hamas from importing rockets and other weapons that will be used to attack Israelis. Why on earth would Israel go to the trouble and huge expense otherwise? The hypothetical rocket scenario described above is hardly more absurd than the constant blaming of Israel already already underway.
Whenever Jews are attacked, it is the Jews themselves who will be blamed for the attack. When Jews fight back, it will be be described as an assault. When Jews are attacked again, it will be described as retaliation for the preceeding Jewish “assault”. That is the mindset of anti-Semites at work. Facts, reason, logic, and common sense count for nothing with them.
Since what you say is patently obvious why should Israel care one iota about the response to the actions it takes TO SURVIVE from the usual suspects in the “International Community?” Let the IC go hang should have become Israel’s automatic response to fake outrage worldwide decades ago.
I see it as an indication of Israel’s fundamental decency that its leaders continue their efforts to enlighten the IC, none of which precludes being tough as nails in dealing with the vile, vicious, murderous, rapacious, crap-culture sand fleas in their region.
The israelis should contract out defense of southern israel to the russians who would have no problem levelling gaza . Just remember Frozny .
Then Gaza would become a NATO member, and they’d threaten to invoke Article Five.